Rational Jew: keys and calling

It’s not that I have nothing to say.  It’s that I often am uncomfortable saying it, because I’m so committed to distinguishing between Diaspora Jewish identity and obligations, and Israeli Jewish identity and obligations.

And I suppose it’s also because – as an outsider, a Diaspora Jew – I really think Israeli Jews have the right to say it, and usually say it better.  At least I’m persuaded.  Again, by Jerry Haber, the Magnes Zionist, just as he’s done is this post this week:

Ahmad’s Key and Aharon’s Key

Posted: 30 Jun 2009 05:40 AM PDT

The key, as is well-known, is a powerful symbol of the Palestinian resistance, and of the Palestinians’ claim that they have a right to return to the land and homes. That key is the house-key that Palestinians took with then into exile and that some of them have kept as a zekher le-hurban, a memorial of the Nakbah. As long as the key is cherished, as long as the memory is left alive, there is hope.

Last week, former Chief Justice Aharon Barak spoke of another key, a key to which he has referred in the past as a “golden key”. In explaining how the State of Israel can remain both Jewish and Democratic – albeit, with difficulty, and in constant tension – he described the Law of Return as a “special key to enter this state.” Only Jews have the key, but once they have entered, there is, or should be, complete equality between citizens, Jews and Arabs. (I haven’t yet seen the speech in English. In Hebrew it is here.)

Two keys, then – Ahmad’s key, which opens a house that probably no longer exists; Aharon’s key, which opens a state that exists, and that provides access to, among other things, Ahmad’s house.

That Aharon’s key impairs Ahmad’s claims is obvious; there is no need to argue that here. But what I wish to show is that the golden key of the Law of Return seriously impairs, and arguably destroys the claim of equality among Israeli citizens that is supposed to be the backbone of Israeli democracy.

Before I explain myself, I will assume as proven the following assumption: That the Israeli Law of Return (together with the Citizenship Law) has no parallel anywhere else in the world. Don’t bother to look for any other country that has the same policies as Israel; there isn’t any. If you think otherwise, leave responses here. For starters, no other Western nation state considers people belonging to its religio-ethnic group around the world, as already citizens, or potential citizens, simply lacking a formal bureaucratic act. And, to my knowledge, no other Western state lacks a formal route for naturalization for non-citizens or potential citizens In Israel, non-Jews (with the exception of spouses and certain degrees of relatives), can become citizens only on an individual basis. Only a handful – a handful out of thousands – have done so.

To see how the Law of Return inherently discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel (a.k.a., Israeli Arabs), consider the following story.

There is a club with eight members, and the club orders a pizza for dinner. At the last minute, four more non-club members show up. They are admitted to the club and given an equal share of the pizza. Now, the original eight are going to get less. This in itself is not unfair, provided that the eight people, or a majority thereof, vote to allow the others in.

But suppose that of the eight people, six are white, and two are black. Suppose also, that the law prohibits, in effect, blacks from entering, and permits, nay, encourages, as many whites as possible to enter. In that case, the blacks as a group are greatly disadvantaged, not only because they have a smaller overall share in the pizza than the whites, but because they will have less say in all subsequent decisions of the club.

Over the last thirty years of the twentieth century, Israel admitted well over a million former Soviet Union immigrants as citizens (not all of them Jews, but all of them non-Arabs.) That means that during the last thirty years, the number of non-Arabs in the population increased significantly. Had there been no F. S. U. aliyah, the percentage of Arabs in the population would have been around 29% today. Because of the aliyah, it is around 19%, and it has been so since 1948. So aliyah directly disadvantaged Israeli Arabs because their share of the pie (better, of the crumbs), and their political clout shrank.

In fact, since their political clout was lessened, so, too, their ability to increase their share of the pie in the future, at least, theoretically.

Now, some will argue that Israel is a Jewish state, and as such, its Arab minority will inevitably not be equal to the non-Arab majority. Fair enough.

But Aharon Barak claims that Israel can have both the Law of Return AND equality among its citizens, a Jewish and a Democratic state.

This is a myth, and the sooner it is laid to rest, the better. The Law of Return inherently discriminates against a group of people – who happen to be citizens and natives — on the basis of ethnicity alone.

Say it out loud, and say it often.

What would we American Jews do without his constant example of intellectual integrity and ethical clarity?

Isreal? in limbo: tongue-tied times, the smell of memory, know hope

It’s been a while since I’ve had enough clarity of thought to “think aloud” here regarding Israel.   Preparations for Passover, and especially the effort to sort out an effective “reform” of my family’s Haggadah, stalled me somewhat.   My inclusion of alternative passages suggested separately by Rabbis Arthur Waskow (Shalom Center) and Michael Lerner (Tikkun Magazine) prompted some very interesting conversations at table, but left me looking for something different.

It wasn’t long before I crossed paths with Carol Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children, published in response to Israel’s recent offensive in Gaza.  My encounter with Churchill’ remarkable piece has given me much to work with, and numerous projects are now underway, in various stages of research and progress, and which will find their way here eventually.   They have occupied me nearly entirely, with news of Israel’s internal difficulties and elections the backdrop for work.

It’s often difficult to know how, as a Reform  Jew, a Diaspora Jew, to respond to Israel’s internal affairs.   Obtaining reliable information and sound opinions is usually my first and principal response, and for these I always begin with the Magnes Zionist.  Lately Shamai Leibowitz’s blog,  Pursuing Justice has also inspired me – a human rights lawyer, Leibowitz’s most recent efforts to publicize the case of Ezra Nawi, jailed Iraqi Jewish human rights activist under prosecution for his opposition to the demolition of Palestinian homes.

So I’ve been stewing, and wondering what to say (again).  And then I stumbled on the work of limbo (blog and on flickr).  I think he’s from Tel Aviv.  I wish I knew more.  I’m speechless in the face of his work on the separation wall.

This Rains Smells of Memory:

in continuation of this storyline, or any storyline for that matter, we turn to become vulnerable to the times. these are the anytimes. the end of the world comes and goes, it seems, on a regular basis.

that said, this chapter, or episode functions as the embodiment of the signs of things to come- a telegram or bottle rocket from elsewhere, that in clumsy dialect is telling us that we must overcome.

the times are happening in real time.

the naturally inevitable dynamics of every fear, hope or premonition we could ever have.

and as we feel the times rising upwards like a flood, were standing here knee-deep with our fingers crossed while we hope-fully plea, “we’ll be after everything someday”.

this rain smells of memory. memories creating themselves in real time.

and so its written in the usual but eerily accurate headlines, its written all over our weary faces.

tattooed on our eyelids so when we sleep we are speaking dreams of elsewhere, and subtly and secretly confessing our desperate love for our busted surroundings, and anything or anyone inhabiting them;

and so in that same clumsy, but very eager dialect, we speak a born-again stutter, “the times wont save you, your embracing of them will.”

this exhibition holds nothing but a reflection of where we are now, and offers us nothing but the suggestion of adaptation and (re)adjustment to the current tides.

this is a binding burden, and we’re all in this together.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised:  a minor proof of human existence on a wall bearing so much of it

This is for the Heavy Hearts Knee-Deep in Worries:  “haven been overcome by toungue-tied times, minor orchestras mend together the tune and in a clumsy accent play: ‘please believe’”)

Impatient Barricades

I believe.  I hope.

Visible Destruction

It cannot be possible for any Jew to say he does not know what housing demolition looks like.  It cannot be possible for any Jew to say she does not know what intolerance and injustice in Israel looks like.  It cannot be possible.

More information here.

Code Pink: knitting against war

“And so sometimes I think that if you just put the mothers in charge for a while, that things would get resolved” – Barack Obama

Recently I contributed six pink and green knitted squares to the thousands collected for the White House fence cozy that Code Pink used in its 2009 Mothers’ Day vigil for peace.  This was Code Pink’s second 24-hour vigil in front of the White House in honor of all mothers and women living under occupation and war zones,  for whom the price of war is the safety and lives of  loved ones, their homes, and their future. With roses lifted and giant cozy unfurled, hundreds called for the return of US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, so that no more mothers will grieve the loss of children in these wars.

Additional still images of Code Pink’s White Cozy project, the process of assembling the giant cozy in D.C., and the vigil, are available here).  But theRealNews televised report, “Roses and Guns for Mother’s Day”, helped me to feel a part of the action in spite of the distance -

Code Pink’s work includes support for peace in Gaza as well.  They are also sponsoring a fund-raising compaign for the children of Gaza -

• $10 will enable us to buy a backpack full of schools supplies for a child.
• $50 will enable 5 children to have the tools they need for the school year.
• $100 will help build an International Friendship Playground at one of the schools destroyed during the invasion.

Contributions can be made here.

Perhaps you could put down your knitting needles or crochet hook long enough to make a contribution

Clean Sweep 2: day & night

Lest it be thought I have no sense of humor … this is how it feels this year, having endeavored to “clean house” and identify both exterior and interior chametz .. And in anticipation of 18 guests for two seders: baked 8 lbs of brisket, 6 dozen macaroons, prepared pints of mushroom paté, a quart of freshly grated horseradish, and poached 2 dozen pieces of gefilte fish.  And polished all the silver.

Chag Sameach!

Clean Sweep: bedikat chametz

Passover is nearly here, only days away.  The continued paralysis in the peace process in Israel-Palestine makes preparation for the holiday just that  more difficult this year.  Raised in the Reform tradition in the 1960s and ’70s by non-observant parents, my experience of the holiday was limited to a single, simple (and incomplete) seder.  Over the years, I’ve searched for the traditions, for meaning in traditions that can be expressed by my own family’s efforts to observe the holiday.

Last year’s Knitted Seder was an opportunity for learning well beyond the simple explanations contained the array of Reform haggadahs we’ve collected, and well beyond my expectations.  This year I’ve made an effort to continue my knitter-ly study of Pesach traditions by exploring the tradition of Bedikat Chametz, cleaning out the chametz (prohibited leavened or fermented foods) from the home.

Jewish families world-wide are preparing for the arrival of Passover.  For “traditional” Jews, the preparations begin with rigorous spring cleaning of the home, culminating in the family’s ritual search for chametz throughout the house, a search conducted with a wooden spoon and feather, illuminated by the light of a single candle, and concluded by burning the collected remaining crumbs.

Spring cleaning happens in my home, and the commitment we make to a week of matzoh has always served to keep us free of chametz.  But this year’s study suggests something new to consider:  to my amazement, I’ve just learned that the search for chametz also symbolizes metaphorically a spiritual house-cleaning, the opportunity to discard the unwanted in ourselves and our communities.  Traditional Jews describe spiritual chametz as the yetzer ha’ra, or “evil impulse;” these are the desires, and fears, that can enslave us emotionally and spiritually.  In my effort to understand this teaching, I’ve found Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s description especially helpful:  chametz is “what lifts us up throughout the year – leads to our working harder, searching deeper, loving more. It is the yetzer, or swelling-impulse, of the soul. But allowed to swell and grow without restraint, it becomes yetzer ha’ra, the evil impulse. It impels us not only to productivity, but to possessiveness; not only to creativity, but to competitiveness; not only to love, but to jealousy and lust. So once a year we must clean out even the uplifting impulse; we must eat the flat bread of a pressed-down people’. (Waskow, Seasons of Our Joy, p. 144, cited here).

I incline towards the creativity Rabbi Waskow describes as a search for spiritual chametz.  I’d like to direct it toward an expansiveness that will bring the values of the holiday for Jews into closer contact with issues of oppression and liberation beyond Jewish narratives (real or mythological) of  persecution and redemption, to make the most of the reflection (I know know) my tradition proposes I pursue at least twice a year (Passover and the High Holiday period).  In spite of the shortage of time, I’ll explore some of the supplementary or alternative haggadot  out there – it’s time to work out the chametz that impedes progress toward a just and lasting peace in Israel-Palestine.  I can start with the Shalom Center’s
Passover of Peace: A Seder for the Children of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah, and I’ll also have a look at the Passover Haggadah
Haggadah Supplement for Etically Oriented Jews and our non-Jewish Allies (Michael Lerner, Tikkun Magazine).

Or maybe, since there won’t be any small children at my family’s table this year, we’ll cut to the chase and spend time exploring how we can reconcile spiritual chametz with  Cherie Brown’s “Seven Principles about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Beyond the blame game”.

1. Every situation, including the current conflict in Gaza, can provide us with new opportunities to think, take leadership, and move the conflict forward, if we are able to act outside of hopelessness and discouragement. Even as the violence continues, new opportunities arise for us to mobilize others, put out correct information, and gain allies for good policies.

2. A just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is taking longer than any of us want, and we need to grieve about the horrible loss of lives on all sides. In particular, we need to grieve about the current setbacks, which are real. But even with these setbacks, there are also important new opportunities for increased dialogue, leadership, mobilization of others, and action.

3. No one group or country deserves to be targeted as the sole perpetrator of the current conflict. Not the Israelis who feel threatened by continued rockets landing in Israel and then seek safety and security by striking back. And not the Palestinians who send the rockets when they feel besieged by an occupation that has lasted way too long.

4. Even if no one side is totally to blame, it is still each side’s responsibility-and obligation-to stop wrong actions and to reach for rational policies and solutions that take everyone’s long-term needs into account.

5. It is not helpful for Diaspora Jews to attack Israelis for the difficulties they have in being able to think clearly under conditions of hopelessness and terror. It is not helpful for Israelis to attack Diaspora Jews when they seek to find their own independent voice and articulate the role that the U.S. government can and should play in moving the current situation forward.

6. Any solution that is found to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will need to take all historic injustices into account but not be bound by them. Both peoples (and their allies) put out narratives about the current situation that have correct information in them-but these narratives also contain distortions that are a result of a history of mistreatment and painful emotion. One narrative says Israel is being besieged: Hamas is primarily a terrorist organization, and there is no choice now but to engage in a long protracted war in Gaza until Hamas is totally defeated. Another narrative says Hamas is primarily a liberation organization, working to free the Palestinian people from occupation by Israel, and therefore should not be blamed for sending rockets into Israel. Any narrative that portrays one side only as a victim and the other side as worthy of all or most of the blame for the conflict does not have the full picture. Any narrative that describes the current situation needs to take into account the history of mistreatment of both peoples; both sides’ hunger for peace, justice, and security; and the need to prevent outside forces from pitting one side against the other for purposes of greed and exploitation.

7. There are no military solutions to this conflict that will achieve lasting peace and justice for Israelis or for Palestinians. Any solution will require the engagement of all Israelis and all Palestinians, including Hamas, in dialogue and negotiations. No people in the current situation can ultimately be destroyed, expelled, or beaten into submission. Attempts to do so will, in the long term, only engender further violence and retaliation, as well as increase the length of time it will take to reach a negotiated settlement.

Cherie Brown is the executive director of the National Coalition Building Institute, an international leadership training organization dealing with anti-oppression issues, and she has been involved in Jewish Middle East peace groups for 35 years. She is currently on the board of Brit Tzedek V’Shalom.

More information about the Bedikat Chametz tradition is available here.

As with all my tikkunknitting projects, the patterns will be available for a contribution in support of peace-building efforts in Israel-Palestine.  Try my Patterns for Peacebuilders page if you are interested in making your own set of “Chametz Patrol” tools.

Spring!: news from poems

from “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”

Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup upon its branching stem-
save that it’s green and wooden-
I come, my sweet, to sing to you.
We lived long together a life filled,
if you will, with flowers. So that
I was cheered when I came first to know
that there were flowers also in hell.
Today I’m filled with the fading memory of those flowers
that we both loved, even to this poor colorless thing-
I saw it when I was a child-
little prized among the living but the dead see,
asking among themselves:
What do I remember that was shaped
as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill with tears.
Of love, abiding love it will be telling
though too weak a wash of crimson
colors it to make it wholly credible.
There is something
something urgent I have to say to you
and you alone
but it must wait while I drink in
the joy of your approach,
perhaps for the last time.
And so with fear in my heart
I drag it out and keep on talking
for I dare not stop.
Listen while I talk on against time.
It will not be for long.
I have forgot and yet I see clearly enough
something central to the sky which ranges round it.
An odor springs from it!
A sweetest odor!
Honeysuckle! And now there comes the buzzing of a bee!
and a whole flood of sister memories!
Only give me time,
time to recall them before I shall speak out.
Give me time, time.
When I was a boy I kept a book to which,
from time to time,
I added pressed flowers until, after a time,
I had a good collection.
The asphodel, forebodingly, among them.
I bring you, reawakened, a memory of those flowers.
They were sweet when I pressed them
and retained something of their sweetness
a long time.
It is a curious odor, a moral odor,
that brings me near to you.
The color was the first to go.
There had come to me a challenge,
your dear self, mortal as I was,
the lily’s throat to the hummingbird!
Endless wealth, I thought, held out its arms to me.
A thousand tropics in an apple blossom.
The generous earth itself gave us lief.
The whole world became my garden!
But the sea which no one tends
is also a garden when the sun strikes it
and the waves are wakened.
I have seen it and so have you
when it puts all flowers to shame.
Too, there are the starfish stiffened by the sun
and other sea wrack and weeds.
We knew that along with the rest of it
for we were born by the sea,
knew its rose hedges to the very water’s brink.
There the pink mallow grows
and in their season strawberries
and there, later, we went to gather the wild plum.
I cannot say that I have gone to hell for your love
but often found myself there in your pursuit.
I do not like it and wanted to be in heaven.
Hear me out. Do not turn away.
I have learned much in my life from books
and out of them about love.
Death is not the end of it.
There is a hierarchy
which can be attained, I think, in its service.
Its guerdon is a fairy flower; a cat of twenty lives.
If no one came to try it the world would be the loser.
It has been for you and me
as one who watches a storm come in over the water.
We have stood from year to year
before the spectacle of our lives with joined hands.
The storm unfolds.
Lightning plays about the edges of the clouds.
The sky to the north is placid, blue in the afterglow
as the storm piles up. It is a flower
that will soon reach the apex of its bloom.
We danced, in our minds, and read a book together.
You remember? It was a serious book.
And so books entered our lives.
The sea! The sea!
Always when I think of the sea
there comes to mind the Iliad
and Helen’s public fault that bred it.
Were it not for that there would have been no poem
but the world if we had remembered,
those crimson petals spilled among the stones,
would have called it simply murder.
The sexual orchid that bloomed then
sending so many disinterested men to their graves
has left its memory to a race of fools or heroes
if silence is a virtue.
The sea alone with its multiplicity holds any hope.
The storm has proven abortive
but we remain after the thoughts it roused
to re-cement our lives.
It is the mind
the mind that must be cured short of death’s intervention,
and the will becomes again a garden.
The poem is complex
and the place made in our lives for the poem.
Silence can be complex too,
but you do not get far with silence.
Begin again.
It is like Homer’s catalogue of ships:
it fills up the time.
I speak in figures, well enough,
the dresses you wear are figures also,
we could not meet otherwise.
When I speak of flowers it is to recall
that at one time we were young.
All women are not Helen, I know that,
but have Helen in their hearts.
My sweet, you have it also, therefore I love you
and could not love you otherwise.
Imagine you saw a field made up of women all silver-white.
What should you do but love them?
The storm bursts or fades!
it is not the end of the world.
Love is something else, or so I thought it,
a garden which expands,
though I knew you as a woman and never thought otherwise, until the whole sea has been taken up and all its gardens.
It was the love of love,
the love that swallows up all else,
a grateful love, a love of nature, of people, of animals,
a love engendering gentleness and goodness
that moved me and that I saw in you.
I should have known, though I did not,
that the lily-of-the-valley
is a flower makes many ill who whiff it.
We had our children, rivals in the general onslaught.
I put them aside though I cared for them.
as well as any man could care for his children
according to my lights.
You understand I had to meet you after the event
and have still to meet you.
Love to which you too shall bow along with me-
a flower a weakest flower shall be our trust and not because we are too feeble to do otherwise
but because at the height of my power
I risked what I had to do,
therefore to prove that we love each other
while my very bones sweated
that I could not cry to you in the act.
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
I come, my sweet, to sing to you!
My heart rouses thinking to bring you news
of something that concerns you and concerns many men.
Look at what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in despised poems.
It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there.
Hear me out for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die
at peace in his bed
besides.

William Carlos Williams

Rational American Jew: unsettling truth

If you haven’t seen Bob Simon’s recent 60 Minutes report on Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and the ways in which settlers intend to prevent a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s time to do so.

The complete report in a single video is available on CBS’ site, or in two parts below:

Part 1

Part 2

Then scoot over to JStreet and join other rational progressive Jews in sending a message of support to Bob Simon for his accurate, thorough, thoughtful and fair coverage of this critical issue.  Now.  And point others to the report.  It’s about time we advocate the un-settling truth of the West Bank settlements and the dangers they pose to a just and sustainable peace.

Rational Reflection: henry siegman & the time for truth

Israel’s use of white phosphorus on Gazan civilians is thoroughly documented.  It is beyond question.  It is nauseating.  So now it’s time to process the facts.  It’s time for unequivocal and undiluted public criticism.

I’m turning to Henry Siegman (director of the US Middle East Project in New York, currently a visiting research professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America) and two of his recent essays:

1. Israel’s Lies (London Review of Books, January 2009), and
   
2. The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam (London Review of Books, August 2007)

If a just and lasting peace in Israel-Palestine is to be achieved, it can only follow from universal acknowledgment of the truth of the awful tragedy of Gaza and the realities of official Israeli policies regarding Palestinian autonomy.  The last time I checked, American Jews were still part of the universe.  We simply cannot publicly claim to want peace but support Israel’s avoidance of it.  It’s time to put up or shut up.

Until then, how dare we sing “Lo yissa goy” in a place of worship, or anywhere else for that matter.

If you aren’t sickened by the evidence, you should be. If you aren’t ashamed, you should be.  If you haven’t spoken out, then speak out!

Then sing for peace.

Lo yissa goy el goy cherev, Lo yilm’du od milchama
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore.

Gaza 7: ceasefire vigil

The shelling has stopped.  There’s ceasefire, or ceasefires.  After the nauseating devastation of the past few weeks, I want to do something in response to ceasefire.  To preserve seven fragile days’ quiet.  There’s so little to contribute from one pair of hands, one computer, one home, on this side of the world.  Except more art.  And another vigil.

I return to the hand.  My hands.  The Chamsa / Hamsa / Khamsa hand, hand of Miriam, Marjam or Fatima, shared icon of fortune.  For me, the hand is a symbol of peace and friendship.

One hand outstretched each day, ready for relationship.  Eight days a week, this week, for peace.

(left to right):  1.  Susan Hajjar’s crochet Chamsa pattern; 2. my own double-knitted Hamsa leaf pattern (both on their way to the TikkunTree); 3. transparent (glue) Hamsa; 4-8. copper and alloy foil Hamsas.
(additional images of the Hamsa Vigil here).